The constant rerun of #RockiesTown
“The injury excuse will creep back in, but if you’ve watched any of these games you’d know that pitching in all phases is just killing the team. And the power outages at the plate have stranded more men than an evil Colonel in an 80’s war movie. Heard this all before? Me too, that’s why I know the team is going nowhere fast. Again.”
This is not sensationalism. This is not click bait. This is the sad truth that the Colorado Rockies are already done. There will be no playoffs, just another mediocre stumble to the finish for a team that should by all accounts do so much better. It’s all over, already.
How do I know? I’ve seen this show before. It’s a rerun. The Rockies will give a brief glimpse of playing like they should and then slowly nose dive, losing games in flaccid fashion while pulling it together once in a while to suck a few gullibles back in. And when it’s very obvious the team isn’t going anywhere, the rest of the fans and media will pack it in as usual.
I’m here to save you some time and give you the option to get out now because it’s all headed in the same direction it always does: there will be no meaningful baseball in the fall for the Rockies, so enjoy the #PartyDeck and the beautiful Colorado weather, because that’s as good as it’s going to get at 20th and Blake.
On our latest (5/14) South Stands Denver podcast, I was admonished for declaring the Rockies were already in a tailspin. I was told the upcoming homestead with the Padres would right the ship and everything would be groovy. I disagreed. It was the same funk we’ve seen every year for the last half dozen or so. And this unfortunately is not the kind of funk you can dance to.
So after a pretty disastrous road trip in the middle of May, the Rockies did come home to supposedly get well against a miserable Padres team. They took two out of three against San Diego, but if you got excited about that, your expectations must already be drastically low. A mostly halfhearted effort against a team they should have smoked? You’ve seen this too, you just don’t remember yet.
Then it was a split with the Giants that if they had swept, the Rockies would have tied San Francisco for the division lead. And even though there was one game they could have won that was suspended due to weather, the Rockies did what they do every time when faced with any sort of challenge: they let mediocrity reign.
Hitting the road again, the Rockies started off in Atlanta to do what they do best: win one out of three against teams that they should at least have a chance of taking a series from. “One step forward, two steps back” should replace the fabled “1995 Wild Card Champs” banner and hang in center field.
The rest of this road trip will take the Rockies through Philadelphia and Cleveland and if they win even three for the rest of this stretch it will be a miracle. Then they come back home to “get well” against the Diamondbacks which could mean another whopping two out of three against an inferior team. The Rockies better rack up the wins quickly because if you look at the rest of the schedule for June, it doesn’t get any easier. Dodgers (twice), Giants, Brewers (twice), Cardinals and the Nationals all greet the Rockies over the next month. Good luck with that.
The injury excuse will creep back in, but if you’ve watched any of these games you’d know that pitching in all phases is just killing the team. And the power outages at the plate have stranded more men than an evil Colonel in an 80’s war movie. Heard this all before? Me too, that’s why I know the team is going nowhere fast. Again. The Rockies are currently sitting five games back from San Francisco and that gap will only widen as the Rockies continue to flail and the Dodgers creep up the standings and take their place in the easiest usurpation since the Nazis rolled through Holland.
We’ve seen the Rockies sputter and never regain form so many times it’s baffling why any of us hang in there when we know how it will end. All of the signs are already there. It’s time to accept that the Rockies are going nowhere and it’s not even June. This is not sensationalism. This is not a way to get you to click a story and be outraged. This is the truth and this is the way it’s going to happen in the constant rerun of #RockiesTown.
